One of the greatest artworks of all time imo, and surely the original "Constructed Jesus" (left and right sides of His face are completely different, and were probably independently conceived as wholes to get the diametrically opposed expressions)

one can only hope & pray that this He meets you in the middle of the air

talking about the red-nosed, heretic-punching, gift-giving fatty, there was a great deal (still is in fact) on canadian amazon for ehrman's latest 1 kilo tome so I took it & am currently tracking its progress on Santa Radar (07:10:00 AM Cincinnati Hub OH US Sleigh Arrival Scan)

"The accounts of Jesus’ life in the New Testament have never been called “histories”; instead, they have always been known as ­“Gospels”—that is “proclamations of the good news". These are books that meant to declare religious truths, not historical facts" - Ehrman.

-VS-

"The nature of the traditions — as soon as we consider them outside the perspective the form critics brought to them — shows that they made reference to the real past history of Jesus. The fact that this is stated in the excellent textbook The Historical Jesus, by Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz,shows how far the mainstream of Gospels scholarship has moved since the heyday of form criticism. The early Christian movement was interested in the genuinely past history of Jesus because they regarded it as religiously relevant...It was left to the Gospel writers to integrate their testimonies into biographies (bioi) of Jesus." - Richard Bauckham

Well ... not that I want to be accused of harmonizing, but there's a difference between saying that the Gospels did not intend to "declare" historical facts, and that the Gospels "made reference" to real past history, or that early Christians were "interested" in genuine past history. Ehrman believes that the Gospels are our best historical record of Jesus, and that a careful analysis of the Gospels reveals historical truth. I don't know Bauckham all that well, but I doubt he believes that everything in the Gospels is historical fact.

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Le Donne, Keith, Pitre, Crossley, Jacobi, Rodríguez

James Crossley (PhD, Nottingham) is Professor of Bible, Society, and Politics at St. Mary's University, Twickenham, London. In addition to most things historical Jesus, his interests typically concern Jewish law and the Gospels, the social history of biblical scholarship, and the reception of the Bible in contemporary politics and culture. He is co-executive editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.

Christine Jacobi studied protestant theology and art history in Berlin and Heidelberg. She is research associate at the chair of exegesis and theology of the New Testament and apocryphal writings. She completed her dissertation at the Humboldt-University of Berlin in 2014. She is the author of Jesusüberlieferung bei Paulus? Analogien zwischen den echten Paulusbriefen und den synoptischen Evangelien (BZNW 213), Berlin: de Gruyter 2015. Christine Jacobi is a member of the „August-Boeckh-Antikezentrum“ and the „Berliner Arbeitskreis für koptisch-gnostische Schriften“.

Chris Keith (PhD, Edinburgh) is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity and Director of the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, London.

Anthony Le Donne (PhD, Durham) is Associate Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary. He is the author/editor of seven books. He is the co-founder of the Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Sacred Texts Consultation and the co-executive editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus.

Brant Pitre (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is Professor of Sacred Scripture at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. Among other works, he is the author of Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile (Mohr-Siebeck/Baker Academic, 2005), and Jesus and the Last Supper (Eerdmans, 2015). He is particularly interested in the relationship between Jesus, Second Temple Judaism, and Christian origins.

Rafael Rodríguez (PhD, Sheffield) is Professor of New Testament at Johnson University. He has published a number of books and essays on social memory theory, oral tradition, the Jesus tradition, and the historical Jesus, as well as on Paul and Pauline tradition. He also serves as co-chair of the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media section of the Society of Biblical Literature.

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Jesus and the Last Supper

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Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance and Text